Steps To Get Fit at Home

The 5 Elements of Fitness

According to Steele, an effective fitness program has five components, all of which you can do at home:

• A warmup.
• A cardiovascular (aerobic) workout.
• Resistance (strength-building) exercises.
• Flexibility moves.
• A cooldown

A warm-up could be an easy walk outside or on a treadmill, or a slow pace on a stationary bike. For the cardiovascular portion, walk or pedal faster, do step aerobics with a video, or jump rope -- whatever you enjoy that gets your heart rate up.

The resistance portion can be as simple as squats, push-ups and abdominal crunches. Or you could work with small dumbbells, a weight bar, bands or tubing.

Increase your flexibility with floor stretches or yoga poses. And your cooldown should be similar to the warm up, says Steele -- "cardiovascular work at a low level to bring the heart rate down to a resting state."

You can do strength work in same workout as your aerobic work, or split them up. Just be sure to warm up and cool down every time you exercise.

If you're short on time one day, increase the intensity of your workout, says Tony Swain, MS, fitness director of East Bank Club in Chicago. Instead of your usual 45-minute ride on the stationary bike, choose a harder program for 25 minutes and really push yourself. Choose the hilly walk in your neighborhood, or jog instead of walking.

You can step up the pace of your strength workout by doing compound exercises -- those that work more than one muscle group at a time.

Tips for home exercisers

The experts offer some other tips for home exercisers:

• Challenge yourself and avoid boredom. At home, you won't have the variety of equipment and classes that are available at a gym. So surf the Internet and browse fitness magazines to check out new workouts and make sure you're exercising correctly. "Pictures are everything. Use them as a guide for form and technique," Swain says.
• Find an exercise partner. You'll be less likely to find excuses when you've arranged to work out with a friend.
• Schedule your workouts. "Have a plan," says Calabrese. "Look at a planner and write out your exercise appointments one month in advance. If something comes up and you have to change one, reschedule it immediately."
• Use a journal to track your progress and jot down any breakthroughs you may have. When you have a bad day, write that down, too, to help you to find patterns you can break. For example, you may find an egg-white omelet gets you through your morning workout better than a bagel.
• Set goals, like training for a race or losing 20 pounds. "A goals should be something you can't do right now, but you know is within your reach," Calabrese says. Give yourself mini-rewards along the way: a new fitness magazine, those workout tights you've been eyeing, or a new pair of sneakers.
• Perhaps most important, make exercise as integral to your life as sleeping and eating, says Swain. "You have to think of it as a lifestyle change. It doesn't end. Get out of the mind frame that exercise is something you're only going to do for a period of time."

How to Get Six Pack Abs

It will take dedication, time and patience to get a six pack. You need to do two things: lose fat and build muscle. You get this by dieting and exercising consistently. You can have the most toned and muscular abs, but it will not show if there is a layer of fat over them. This article will discuss ways in which you can accomplish both of these goals.

Method 1 of 2: Building Ab Muscles

 

1  Do sit ups. Lie on the floor, feet on the floor, knees up and hands crossed on your chest. Have someone hold your feet down, or wedge them underneath something heavy. Sit all the way up, lifting your lower back off the floor along with your shoulder blades. Keep your back straight (no hunching). Lower yourself down. Repeat.

• Once this becomes relatively easy for you (i.e. you can do a quite a bit with ease) start adding more challenges. Find an incline bench. Do weighted sit ups. Hold a weight on your chest while you do these. As these become easier, hold heavier and heavier weights.

2 Do crunches. Lie on the floor (with or without a mat) with your arms in front of your chest or with your hands lightly touching your temples (never behind your head). Bend your knees. Raise your shoulders (upper torso) towards your knees, using strictly your abdominal muscles.

• It is very important to not lift your entire back off the floor, as this can cause back strain. Additionally, the extended movement does not help you develop six pack abs any faster.
• The most important part of the crunch is the initial flexing of your abs as you lift your shoulders off the floor. As soon as you begin lifting off the floor, exhale through your mouth, ending with a gasp once your shoulders are off the floor.
• Pause for a second once you are at the top of the crunch and exhale the last bit of air from your diaphragm while flexing your abs. Lower back down slowly and controlled while inhaling through your nose, just until your shoulder blades touch the ground. Do not let your head touch the ground.

3 Train your entire core. To build really great abs it's helpful understand what abs do. Their full name is "rectus abdominis."^[1] The "rectus" bit is Latin for "straight, proper, upright." Contrary to popular opinion, the abdominal's primary job is not to curl you up into a ball, but rather to work together with the back muscles to maintain correct posture and stabilization. Some of the best exercises for abs are ones that force your entire core to go into overdrive to support your spine. Some exercises that do this are squats and deadlifts.